Twitter unintentionally resets some passwords trying to plug breach

Twitter reset some passwords in an attempt to protect members whose accounts may have been compromised by a hacker, but inadvertently reset a larger number of accounts than needed, the micro-blogging service said Thursday.

Twitter and other online services reset passwords all the time if they believe someone has hacked into an account. In this case, the breach was real – the tech news site TechCrunch reported spammers hacked its Twitter account and posted some of those fake get-paid-to-work-from-home offers.

However, Twitter said you might have to reset even if your account wasn’t affected:
“In this case, we unintentionally reset passwords of a larger number of accounts, beyond those that we believed to have been compromised. We apologize for any inconvenience or confusion this may have caused.”

Twitter isn’t saying exactly how big the problem was or how many accounts the company reset beyond those that were actually compromised. A company spokeswoman said “a very small percentage” of users were notified by e-mail that their passwords were reset.